Teak refinishing is almost done, I put the 3rd coat of Cetol on gunnales today. One more to go, which may have to wait until Wednesday, looking at weather forecasts. Next project on the list is to clean out the water tank. We removed the tank gauge which provides a 2inch hole into the tank. Here we are sucking out the small amount of water still in the tank (been sitting for 2 years).
All put back together and ready to fill. I still need to run bleach through the hoses. Alga and bacteria grow in the plastic hoses over time and we need to run bleach through the hoses every few months. The T-fitting valve you can see allows me to suck bleach from a bucket into the hoses without having to put the bleach into the main water tank - not good for the aluminum tank. The filter you can see collects the calcium crystals from the tank before they can move on to the pump and jam it up. Easier to clean the filter here than have to clean out the pump. I have water freshener/cleaner also that I will need to run through the hot water tank to clean out the small amount of water that has been sitting in the hot water tank for the last couple years.
Even though we always filter our water through a house filter when filling the tank, we still get deposits (apparently calcium precipitate) that accumulate on the bottom of the tank. Here's a look at our deposits after 15yrs of use - this is the first time we have removed the gauge and looked inside. If you enlarge the photo and look closely you will see the pile of deposits along the center line of the tank. There is a slight "v" in the tank bottom so the deposits settle in the middle.
I used a shop wet/dry vac to suck the deposits out. I also taped a putty knife to a copper pipe to reach down in and scrape the deposits to a spot directly under the hole so I could get to them with the vacuum. It worked pretty good. Couldn't get it perfectly clean, but did good enough.
Here's a photo of the water gauge. It had a layer of calcium deposits on it that were preventing the float from freely rising and falling. I scaped and sanded it with wet/dry sand paper and now it is ready to reinstall. Should work perfectly now.
All put back together and ready to fill. I still need to run bleach through the hoses. Alga and bacteria grow in the plastic hoses over time and we need to run bleach through the hoses every few months. The T-fitting valve you can see allows me to suck bleach from a bucket into the hoses without having to put the bleach into the main water tank - not good for the aluminum tank. The filter you can see collects the calcium crystals from the tank before they can move on to the pump and jam it up. Easier to clean the filter here than have to clean out the pump. I have water freshener/cleaner also that I will need to run through the hot water tank to clean out the small amount of water that has been sitting in the hot water tank for the last couple years.
